Saturday, May 17, 2008

Well Delena and I, along with the Fullers, attended Dave Ramsey LIVE today. It was an exciting seminar on taking control of your finances. Working in the financial industry, I always felt I was pretty financially savvy. Then about a year ago I saw an episode of The Dave Ramsey show on FOX Business. I was impressed on his financial ideas. For Christmas I got the book, The Total Money Make Over, by Dave Ramsey. It was a New York Times Best Seller and I quickly found out why. After finishing the book in about two days; I then passed it on to Delena for her reading pleasure. We were hooked. Finally a wealth building program that you don't have to buy anything. Just work hard, live on a budget and understand the debt is dumb! I realized all I knew about finances was wrong and I could do so much better. The exciting part is his ideas fall in line with the church!

Well here we are, nearly a year later and excited for our future of Financial Freedom. We no longer worship at the alter of the great FICO, we will never get a loan for a car again, and love meeting together once a week to discuss our budget (sometimes more). Our marriage has grown closer because of this program.

Well when we heard Dave was coming to Salt Lake City, we jumped on the chance to go. He really just re-explained all we knew from reading his books, watching his show, or downloading his podcasts. But it was great to get that extra bump. He had lots of great energy and really got us moving.

Saturday, May 10, 2008

I was remembering why I wanted a sandbox. The Groves got one across from us and recently posted to their blog about it [see here]. Thank them for inspiring me. Joseph went over and played, he had a great time. I knew we needed a sandbox after that. Here is the finished box, includes a locking clip to hold it up against the fence when open.

After many weeks of thinking about this. I have decided to build Joseph a sandbox. He loves playing in the sand and dirt. But I didn't want to put one in our lawn or have to move it all the time. We have a small section of our back yard, near our cherry tree, that we have never been able to decide what to put there. Finally we decided a homemade sandbox should go there. Early this morning I got up and purchased the necessary materials and went to work. I am not finished as of yet. I had to pause for my wife's primary activity. But we are well on our way. We hope to finish it later today.

Here are some photos of Joseph and I working on it together. We are having tons of fun.